Byner Rushing Toward a Redskin Record

Earnest Byner couldn’t help hearing the Philadelphia Eagles’ defensive linemen talking to themselves last Sunday.

“You could hear those guys (saying), ‘Hey, man, these guys can’t run on us. Nobody runs on us.’ We continued to call it and ran it right at them,” the Washington Redskins’ running back said this week.

They did it again and again and again.

Coach Joe Gibbs called Byner’s number eight straight times on the opening drive against the Eagles.

“That drive really set up the whole game,” Byner said.

When the Redskins took over on their first possession on their 39, quarterback Mark Rypien threw a 16-yard pass to Terry Orr on first down.

The next eight plays, he called Byner’s number, including a second-and-eight play and a second-and-seven play when the Eagles may have been looking for a pass.

Those two second-down runs each gained 6 yards and then Byner got the first downs on a pair of third-and-short runs. By the eighth carry, the Redskins had a third-and-three on the Eagle 14.

Byner had gained 2, 6, 2, 3, 6, 5, 6 and 1 yards against one of the toughest run defenses in football.

Rypien then finished off the drive with a pair of passes to get the touchdown.

The result was the Redskins had forced the Eagles to respect the run and set up the play-action passes that enabled the Redskins to take control of the game and win, 16-12.

Along the way, about the sixth play, Byner even got his bell rung, but he stayed in there.

“My head sort of expanded like boing, “ he said with a smile.

Byner and Ricky Ervins wound up combining for 100 yards against the Eagles with Byner getting 45 in 18 carries and Ervins adding 55 in 18 carries.

Byner admits he’d rather get the 100-yard figure by himself, but he’s a team player who accepts the role of sharing the ball-carrying duties.

“When you start something, you want to finish it, but I always tell Ricky, ‘Hey, man, keep it going.’ Obviously, it (platooning) works so the individual things sort of have to go to the side a little bit. If we both accept it and encourage each other, it works better than if we’re fighting against each other. Then we’d have some problems.”

Byner usually goes the first two series and Ervins comes in for the third and then they split time. Even though he’s sharing time, Byner is nearing some personal milestones.

With 431 yards in six games, he’s on a pace for an 1,149-yard season. That would make him the first Redskin ever to get three straight 1,000-yard seasons. He’d also become only the 11th running back in NFL history to get a 1,000-yard season at age 30 or over.

Jim Brown retired at age 29 and many other Hall of Fame running backs, including O.J. Simpson, Larry Csonka and Earl Campbell, no longer were thousand-yard runners at age 30. It also appears that Eric Dickerson will fall into that category.

The two oldest players to do it were a pair of Hall of Famers, former Redskin John Riggins and John Henry Johnson, who both did it at age 35.

Byner, who turned 30 on Sept. 15, doesn’t seem to have lost a thing. Last year, he was slowed by a knee injury after getting 747 yards in the first 10 games. He got only a single 100-yard game after that and finished with 1,048.

This year, he’s made a complete recovery and should be able to top last year’s figure if he stays healthy.

Byner wasn’t even aware that gaining a thousand yards at age 30 was an unusual feat until a reporter told him at the start of the year, but he’s got his eye on it now.

“I’d like to get up to over 500 this week,” he said as the team prepares for Sunday’s game against the Minnesota Vikings in the Metrodome.

Byner has found a second career with the Redskins. When he arrived in 1988, he came with the baggage from Cleveland of his playoff mishaps that included the ill-fated fumble in the 1987 AFC title game against the Denver Broncos.

Now he’s got a Super Bowl ring and he gets lauded in public, but he keeps a low profile.

“A lot of times when I go out, I’m not recognized. I think a lot of people think I’m actually bigger and taller than I am (5-10 and 218) so I sneak by a lot of time,” he said.

He’s become one of Gibbs’ favorite players because of his all-around play. He blocks as well as runs.

“This guy will knock your eye teeth out. He’s so tough that I think that carries over to the rest of your team. He’s going to get hit like you wouldn’t believe and yet he’ll step up there in pass protection and drill somebody,” Gibbs said.

Byner said he has no real explanation for his longevity except that he’s avoided major injuries and is never complacent.

“I continue to try to get better,” he said. “If you do that and you don’t get happy with anything you do, you stay fresh.”

He may be fresh enough to join the Over-30 Club.

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Rypien has been roasted and toasted, popped and chopped, cheered and jeered. He has played so badly at times that it looked as if he would single-handedly keep the Redskins out of the playoffs and he also has thrown some of the best passes of his life, such as the one on Sunday when he stood in the pocket against a fierce Philadelphia pass rush and threw Terry Orr a 51-yard strike.

He didn’t see that completion until he saw the replay a day later. By the time Orr cradled the ball in his arm, Rypien was lying beneath two Eagles. He also has thrown some of the worst passes of his life, such as three interceptions and no touchdowns against Detroit as well as three interceptions -- two returned for fourth-quarter touchdowns -- in helping the Redskins blow an 18-point lead at Phoenix.

Now, having seen his season turn around so dramatically, having played two games that resemble last season in tone and numbers, having helped get the Redskins back on their feet, Rypien can smile again.

“You deal with it by waking up in the morning, and even though you have nightmares, your little girl comes in and jumps on you and lets you know she still loves you,” Rypien said. “You lean on your family, and we’re lucky to have two families--the one here at Redskin Park and the one at home. They’re both there for you. But let’s be honest--those were tough days. You think about it a lot and it has to come back to the fact that this is a fun game.

“I decided to relax for a couple of days with my family and that eased the pain a little. Then you come back out and do what you’ve always done, which is to go back to work.”

In the worst of times -- and times haven’t been much worse than the days after the Phoenix game -- the one thing the Redskins knew about Rypien was how he would react to adversity. They knew he would work hard.

Gibbs said all good quarterbacks have been steeled to survive bad times, because by the time they get to the NFL they’ve already been through plenty of them. They were the most important players on their high-school teams and they had their games critiqued even then.

Rypien had tough times at Washington State. His growth with the Redskins has included solving many problems -- especially fumbles and injuries -- and has been watched by almost everyone.

His career has been such a bumpy ride that for a few weeks there must have been people inside the organization wondering if last season hadn’t been a one-time ride never to be repeated.

Then a week and a half ago, with the offensive line in tatters and the Redskins looking like a team on a downward spiral, Rypien trotted out and threw for 245 yards and a touchdown in a 31-point rout of Denver. Six days later, he did almost the same thing against Philadelphia, throwing for 240 yards and a touchdown in a four-point victory.

In two games, he looked almost exactly like the guy who was the key ingredient to last season’s championship.

And football is fun again.

“That’s sometimes what you have to remind yourself,” he said. “The game still has to be fun.”